This Week
Same Venue, New Menu
La Difference
responds to
diner requests
for meat choices.
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
IV
hile many of us reserved the
late-night hours before
Passover for final holiday
preparations, Paul Kohn's
plan was to be in the kitchen of La
Difference, his West Bloomfield restaurant.
But he won't be cooking.
"We've scheduled a midnight kashering,"
Kohn says of step one of a major plan to con-
vert his dairy eatery into a meat restaurant.
The change is being made, he says,
"because of customer request. People say
they eat dairy out all over. They want a
kosher hot dog or veal or lamb chops."
He hopes to provide the community with
what they're looking for, while also increas-
ing customer volume. "We've given it two
years and that's a good try, but it hasn't been
a break-even operation," he says of the
restaurant that has had a dairy menu since it
opened in December 1998 at 7295 Orchard
Lake Road in the Robin's Nest Plaza.
Last Dec. 24, a one-time-only meat din-
ner, cooked entirely outside of the restau-
rant and served on disposable tableware,
filled the nearly 100-seat restaurant at two
separate dinner times.
"It's time for a change," says Kohn, whose
meat and dairy catering business, Quality
Kosher Catering, has been housed inside
Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield
for the last 20 years. "The ambience is already
there, so we're remodeling on the plate."
New Beginnings
After serving a dairy lunch Thursday,
April 5, the restaurant closed, as it has in
the past during Passover. When it reopens
for dinner on Wednesday, April 18, it will
be with new dishes, a totally new menu
and a newly koshered kitchen.
"We will try to make kosher as much of
Other Kosher Dini
Six restaurants
offer kosher
fare in metro
Detroit.
4/6
2001
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer
IV
ith Detroit's kosher food
diners continually spinning
through a revolving restau-
rant door, an updated status
of where to eat and what is available is in
order.
In the last year, Oak Park's New York
Pizza World closed its doors. In the next
few months, Milk and Honey will open in
the West Bloomfield Jewish Community
Center.
Among the six kosher restaurants in the
Detroit area, All-K and the Soup Bowl
Deli were opened in the last year.
Jerusalem Pizza has moved. Taste of Class
has made menu additions. And La
Difference is ready to go from a dairy
menu to a meat menu. (See related story.)
Regular ethnic food nights have been
instituted by caterers Jeffrey Rosenberg at
Adat Shalom Synagogue and Chaim
Goldgrab at the Sara Tugman Bais Chabad
Torah Center.
Here's a taste of what metro Detroit has
to offer in the way of kosher restaurant
dining. All restaurants listed are supervised
by the Southfield-based Wad Harabonim
(Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater
Detroit):
the kitchen as we can," says Rabbi Joseph
Krupnik, kashrut director of the Wad
Harabonim (Council of Orthodox Rabbis c
Greater Detroit in Southfield), who will
oversee the changeover. Whatever can't be
made kosher through the use of charcoal, a
blowtorch and boiling and cold water vats,
will be replaced. Rabbi Krupnik also will
supervise the crew bringing in new meat
eatery and cookery and removing dairy one
Some new equipment, such as a new,
larger grill for cooking meats, will be
needed, with an expected $20,000 in ren
ovation costs being invested by Kohn.
Kohn finds the change a welcome chal-
lenge. "We don't need to emulate butter,
which is dairy, when we can use fresh vir-
gin olive oil infused with fresh herbs," he
says, as an example.
Adds executive chef John Schmidt, "I
think this is going to give the staff a new,
invigorated energy and inspiration. After
cooking fish for two years, I am excited t
be able to create new dishes — and cook
prime rib and roast and short ribs."
More Changes
The restaurant, previously closed on
Fridays, now will open for lunch and for
JERUSALEM PIZZA
26025 Greenfield Road, Southfield; (248
552-0088. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 3
p.m. Friday; and an hour after the end o
Shabbat on Saturday nights.
If the name of a restaurant is any indica
tion of its menu, Jerusalem Pizza should
called Jerusalem Pizza, Salads, Calzone,
Sandwiches, Vegetarian Foods and Soups.
The nearly 5-year-old restaurant moved
into a larger location in Southfield last
summer. With seating for 12, the eatery,
owned by Soril J. and Aryeh Sharon, doe s
mostly carryout and catering business.
"We have a wide variety of platters, wit i
egg salad, tuna, whitefish and breads," say
Brian Jacobs, store manager.
The restaurant sells 25 specialty gourrn
ALL-K
26035 Coolidge, Oak Park; (248) 547-
2626. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday
through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sunday.
Before its opening last October, ALL-K,
short for "all kosher," spent its first three
months as a deli. Now that it's a dairy
restaurant, the menu boasts a variety
Chuck Ehrenreich of Taste of Class displays a new
of vegetarian and cheese-filled food
specialty sandwich.
choices. Serving pizza, bread sticks,
fresh falafel, cheese and garlic bread,
burritos, french fries, hot soup,
nachos and calzones, the Oak Park
eatery does mostly carryout business,
but also has limited seating.
"And we have bagels on Sunday,"
says Deena Jacobovitz, who owns the
restaurant with her husband Josef.
"We bring them in par-baked and we
finish baking them here." The dairy
items at ALL-K are cholov Yisroel
(milk from Israel.)